Monday, July 30, 2018

Meditations on America and Rome

Historical comparisons between ancient Rome and the contemporary US are tough. It's easy to fall into the trap of inevitability about how things will be based on how things have been. And spergs will inevitably point out the places where the comparisons break down.

When a big-brained brow ridge takes a stab at it, though, it's as good an excuse as any to do the same:

Razib Khan is fond of noting we've yet to have our Sulla. He has, among other contexts, said this dismissively to people who pretend Trump is something like a Sulla.

I've variously thought of Trump as a Gracchan figure, a class traitor who is willing to piss all over the reigning power structure to do what he thinks needs to be done; a Julius Caesar--this one is so easy even historically illiterate thespians, who risibly use women and minorities as stand-ins for the conservative senators who assassinated the progressive Trump/Caesar, see it; a Hadrian who built a wall and pulled back the overextended boundaries of the empire; an Aurelian who was well on his way to putting things back together before prematurely being assassinated, an assassination that nearly led to the permanent dissolution of the empire; a Constantine who forever reorients politics and the understanding of the state; and a Justinian who gives Rome one last grasp at greatness before it collapses, never to become anything more than the shadow of its former self.

So in no particular order, some thoughts:

- Z's understanding of the intelligence agencies as a contemporary praetorian guard is a great way to think about it. From the Julio-Claudians all the way through to the tetrarchy, the praetorians played a major role in the power politics of the Roman state. It wasn't until Constantine literally went to war with them in the early 4th century that their influence was eliminated.

The decisive point in that war was the battle of the Milvian Bridge. Prior to that battle is when Constantine is said to have had a vision from God wherein he was told that in the sign of chi roh, he would conquer. To greatly oversimplify, he won the battle, eventually became sole emperor, and converted the empire to Christianity.

If Trump ends up in the same league as Constantine, the "god-emperor" stuff will move from memery to monuments. Considering that a real possibility may have been understandable a couple of years ago. It just feels silly now.

- The political class hate the idea of an interloper who does not work his way up the cursus honorum in the prescribed way. The path to the top is supposed to be through the legislative branch, preferably as house member and then senator, or through a governorship. Prior to Trump, we have to go back to Dwight Eisenhower for someone who got to the presidency without checking any of those boxes. Winning the second world war helped Ike, though. Trump doesn't have a legacy like that to trade on. It's another reason the Establishment hates him so much.

- Edward Gibbon famously designated the imperial reign from Nerva through Marcus Aurelius as the time of the five good emperors. I've thought of that as corresponding to America from the end of the WWII through the mid-60s, with the fifties as the zenith, the calm before the storm, the years of the golden boy, Antoninus Pius. It is in this rendering that Trump is an Aurelian figure, one who briefly emerges to cut against the grain of the time period he exists in but who is ultimately snuffed out by the dysfunctional power structure of the day.

The chaos he emerged from subsequently gets worse before it gets better. In Rome's case, the political dissolution that followed, with multiple proclaimed emperors fighting for control from different parts of the empire, was put back together again under Diocletian. It took a fundamental change the way Rome operated to stick. This is a parallel commenter Dissident Right can probably get on board with.

- Our impending dissolution may not be temporary, however. While Diocletian was able to put the Roman egg back together again, in a relatively short historical period of time the empire cracked harder, and Rome--ported 850 miles east--proceeded to live on as a shell of its former self for another millennia, trading on its former glory and its impenetrable walls (nuclear weapons!).

A different option, one which appeals to me more, would be to reconcile ourselves to relative decline. We could withdraw from our global commitments and settle down as a middling nation, well able to defend our sovereignty and with strictly controlled borders, but geostrategically unambitious. We could devote our national energies to commerce and culture. That is, after all, what our Founders intended.

- Derb's scenarios presume an effectively unified political entity. As Heartiste puts it, the contemporary US is an empire existing almost entirely within the borders of the mother country herself. Instead of maintaining an external empire, America invited one in.

The western Roman empire--the one that contained Italy itself--is conventionally said to have fallen in the 5th century. But Justinian reconquered Italy 100 years later. Few people remember this, though, because Italy was no longer Roman by this point. The potential parallels with the American Southwest are obvious.

Parenthetically, this is why I'm increasingly more comfortable with the "identitarian" label than with the "nationalist" one. I feel more solidarity with Anatoly Karlin or a guy in Stratford who voted for Brexit than I do with Miguel who invaded through southern California last week or D'Brickshaw who drove by a funeral for La'quintisha and shot three of her cousins on the other side of the state line.

To the charge that the term "identitarian" is just an attempt to repurpose "white nationalist", I say identitarianism isn't just for whites. Maybe it's a more sophisticated-sounding way of saying "ethnic nationalist". That's fine, though it begs for "nationalist" to be distinguished from "ethnic nationalist" as something like "civic nationalist". And now we're getting into pretty thick spergweeds.

- Z admonishes those who see dissolution coming in the near future, reminding us that there is a lot of ruin in a nation. The point is well taken, though the sheer number of people within the American empire who hope for its ruination is surely much higher--in absolute terms, obviously, but also proportionally--than was ever the case in ancient Rome.

30 comments:

Echoing what R. Khan said about Sulla: when we do get someone like that, it will be a Dem or GOPe. Sulla tried to roll the clock back, giving all power to the oligarchy. That's a McConnell-Sanders axis. Sulla's constitution barely survived him by ten years, torn down by Money and Army (Crassus & Pompey).

The better comparison is Byzantium especially in regards to Washington.

[to reduce Byzantium to the Walls of Constantinople is an entire field of historical illiteracy all it's own you know].

However you continue to ignore or wish away our geography - it's not going anywhere.The geography never mind the character of our enemies

Also all of the above were willing to fight and did.

You aren't.

You'd get 100 years of war here to reunite and throw out the foreigners in the end anyway instead of the peace you seek through fantasies of dissolution. It would be exactly China 19th/20th centuries. Sulla? Try Mao. The Chinese respect him for a reason.

If you're not willing to fight for what you've got then you get nothing. This is eternal to man's fate. Our geography demands the winner takes Atlantic to Pacific. Nothing less will ever, ever do.

I'd say that Newt Gingrich represents a Sulla figure better than Trump does. The GOP gains in 1994 were fueled by an anti-immigration backlash and a backlash against the tide towards socialist healthcare and gun bans. Newt, like Sulla, was not able to turn back the tides.

Crassus is Bezos, but we don't yet know who the Caesar and Pompey are.

Perhaps Barron will be our Octavian, if we continue on we have to consider that the birth of Christ was somewhere around that time, maybe those Rapture types are onto something.

The greatest glory of Rome was under the Empire, not the Republic. Perhaps it shall be for us as well.

If you're not willing to fight for what you've got then you get nothing. This is eternal to man's fate. Our geography demands the winner takes Atlantic to Pacific. Nothing less will ever, ever do.

Nothing says we can't "break up", expel our unassimilable minorities onto the left-dominated parts which love them so much, and then go after those parts once they've weakened their hosts with the chaos and parasitism which caused us to want them out in the first place.

One thing is for sure, any part of the US without Mexicans and Africans (and their (((most ardent advocates)))) or the tax burden required to support them is going to get very strong very fast.

The successor red country or countries would likely be shouldered with a substantial "alimony" payment to the blue countries as the price of keeping its "white privilege". I'd be shocked if the red country gets to keep WMD, threats of "Nazi Nukes" would be a staple of blue propaganda.

We'd also have the PRC mediating the divorce. The EU might still be around, or might not. Russia can't project power into this hemisphere, even Canada could be a bridge to far.

I think conditions have to get far worse for partition to move into the political debate. Of course if Trump wins again, and especially if Kobach wins in 2024, California (Hawaii?) is gone. Florida will likely partition north/south. The Northeast cities will receive some form of autonomy.

On the other hand, General Secretary for Life Kamala Harris could enshrine the new refounded United States of Multikult Poz, with substantial social welfare benefits funded by Silicon Valley genius and maximum neoliberal. The far-right suffers a generational eclipse as boomers die off. A few die hard rebels in the Intermountain West/Appalachia are cut down by combat drones. The surviving dissident right moves to Belarus.

"That wasn't the end of it. Since the 1980s, Mugabe and Mnangagwa have systematically won every election by marginalizing, jailing and torturing opposition politicians, marginalizing the members of the Ndebele tribe, and rigging elections. This has continued to the present time, and few opposition politicians believe that it will end now. "

The post also mentions how "Rhodesia" was a fairly attractive place in the 60's and 70's, then Mugabe et al blew smoke about how much better things would be under his reign. Of course everything got worse in the 80's and just got even worse later on.

When you understand generational dynamics and historical cycles, it's clear that the same things play out in one region after another, and within and between various tribes. A particular time, place, and people experience comfort and glory (the High), but people get restless and start questioning things (the Awakening). Once order and conformity has been decimated (the Unraveling), it brings us closer to a Crisis stage, during which great collective conflict will emerge and a certain ideology and people will prevail eventually.

The US could well descend into another Civil War, absent some kind of galvanizing collective and sustained attack against us. It's possible that the Russophobes are desperately trying to galvanize America against Russia precisely for this reason. But it's falling totally flat because Russia hasn't gone Pearl Harbor or Bataan Death March on America. In fact, Putin shared information about terrorist intel to America in the 2010's, which was credible, as a gesture of good will, a fact which has been completely buried. Obama himself "famously" offered himself (and by extension, the US) up for amicable dialogue with Russia, which only goes to show you that Russia is a boogeyman of convenience, to the horror of the Deep State and also those who are earnestly committed to the US not cracking apart along tribal lines.

It should also be noted that Russia is in a somewhat different cycle than America. Though Russia experienced an obvious Unraveling in the 80's and 90's when the Soviets dissolved and gave way to predatory neo-liberals, one could argue that the 90's Unraveling was so horrendous for Eastern Europe that their crisis began in the late 90's/early 2000's. Whereas in Europe and the Anglo West, things weren't that terrible in the 90's and early 2000's. Thus, Russia has now had 15-20 years to develop a crisis resolution plan, whereas in America the crisis has only really deepened over the last 5-10 years. Russia could be in, or the verge of, it's new High era (if Putin and his Russian allies are playing their cards right), whereas America is clearly in the rudimentary stages of how to resolve the crisis and enter a new High.

Trump appears to be hell bent on making China The Enemy. Because of cultural Marxism and a lack of historical rivalry between the US and China, a lot of Western elites appear to be reluctant to "turn on" China. But it's also true that China's current cycle is fairly aligned with America's. The 1990's and 2000's were tremendous Boom periods for China. So if America and China experience the same emotional and political moods at the same time, it's possible that the US and/or China could commit some great offense, some crime, against each other, thus kicking off a new big war/new found rivalry, with Russia possibly being accepted as a full ally of the US(much as they were in WW2) with which to contain Chinese ambitions.

Being that Russia already tried empire and failed at it from the 1930's-1980's, Russia's leadership genuinely wants Russia to not get too big for their britches, and adequately defend their pre-existing territory and assets. China, on the other hand, appears to have leadership utterly drunk on the economic and political good fortunes of the 1970's-2000's, which suggest they could get bigger heads and try and take on more countries and acquire greater resources. Russia faded away in the 90's, America (if it isn't stupid) could be allowed to fade away (with some obvious contraction pains) in the 2020's. China could possibly be the next big bully on the block by then, with many countries uniting to contain China's ambitions. And given that China has never been keen on immigrants, we shouldn't expect them to repeat the US style empire of annexing people rather than land.

Partition has barely gotten off the ground in South Africa, under far worse circumstances that we are likely to face (barring economic collapse). If anything, the data seems to show the ANC as more popular than it has ever been before.

Brexit is now underwater in the polls, as 60% of the UK wants to stay in. The EU has become more popular across the Continent, though not at its mid-2000s levels of popularity.

The only African countries to have partitioned since 1960 have been Sudan/South Sudan and Ethiopia/Eritrea. Both underwent genocide and economic collapse. The pen is truly mightier than the sword as no African country has overthrown the colonial borders.

The USSR breakup is an example of a successful partition, but the country broke up on existing republic lines, and in most cases the Communist Party cadre took over in the successor state. Attempts by Russia to annex friendly territories came with great cost, as did attempts by Chechens to break off.

Territorial Integrity is a shibboleth of international diplomacy, a "Heritage America autonomous zone" is an easer pill to swallow, than a revanchist Red State with Nazi Nukes.

Wrt to Chinese expansionism, its relevant to note that the Northeast regions bordering Russia have the lowest fertility rate in the PRC (only YT calls it Manchuria). The one child policy was most strictly enforced there, not much need for lebensraum. Historical Chinese imperialism was targeted at Korea and Vietnam, and the overseas diaspora building commercial ties and corrupting local rulers. The settler colonial projects are in Xinjiang and Tibet. Trump should propose a deal that has the US join the Belt and Road project in exchange for the end of intellectual piracy and currency manipulation.

The Chinese demographic window is closing by 2030, if they don't make their move by then, they will be just a bigger and more assertive version of Japan.

If the Trade War is viewed as grand strategy, it makes sense for us to ease off on NAFTA, and possibly sign a free-trade deal with India in exchange for no more H-1Bs. Production will move to India/Mexico. (I prefer the abrogation of NAFTA and a free-trade deal with Russia, but that's obviously unfeasible) Major concern is the rare earths. We will get to see if the dirigisme of China/Japan is better than the Anglo free market.

Because of cultural Marxism and a lack of historical rivalry between the US and China, a lot of Western elites appear to be reluctant to "turn on" China.

Also, a lot of our (((hostile elites))) love Communism, and hate Russia for eliminating the Soviet Union. Turning toward Russia and away from hostile competitor China helps to disempower those (((elites))), which is good for Americans.

it makes sense for us to ease off on NAFTA, and possibly sign a free-trade deal with India in exchange for no more H-1Bs.

We don't have to negotiate with India for that, we have to steamroll Big Tech.

Rare earths are not actually rare, they're just costly to extract. They come associated with lots of thorium, too. Re-designating thorium from "radioactive waste" to "nuclear fuel" would create a market for what's now a costly waste stream and make refining that much more economic. This is all doable with literally a stroke of the pen. Getting Washington to make that stroke possible, though....

That's an angle I've not heard of before. The success of Chinese manufacturing being put down to IQ. It makes superficial sense, but there's nothing about low wage labor that particularly requires a high intelligence to perform repetitive tasks. Certainly to run the factories, but the US once had a large number of rural outmigrant blacks working in heavy industry.

China has the benefit of the long rivers for logistics, India/Mexico lack that, I think the Indus is actually dried out in the lower reaches (Pakistan) due to irrigation. Labor costs are increasing in China, so some of the business will be moving out, and it would serve us well to accelerate it.

In macro-historical terms, China/India are returning to their shares of the global economy they had prior to the Industrial Revolution. I'd give Pajeet and his pals credit for keeping the country stable and developing a sizeable nuclear program (a strange inability to develop workable small arms). I'd rather be aligned with India than with Pakistan (China's Israel).

I think that actual economic crisis is coming and that will go on without end. This is another way of saying that I am calling the world-historical top.

Germany and Japan have fertility rates of 1.5 and America is basically similar. Sub-Saharan Africa is at 5 and 6. And with a much younger population to boot, the population shift is something like a factor of 10 in 50 years and a factor of 100 in a century.

This is an HBD blog historically and we understand that demographics swamps everything. Global average IQ must collapse. Blacks and Hispanics basically accumulate little wealth and they are numerically taking over.

And the open borders crowd is ushering it forth by flooding into the developed world people who are not merely not economically beneficial but who are drains on first world wealth.

Moronic Libertarian economists think open borders will be pro-growth by plugging third worlders into the global economy. They are wrong, because third worlders quickly drain the national budgets of their host countries, killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

When GDPs start moving backwards for HBD reasons, you are facing a recession many hundreds of years long. I am privileged and honored to clearly see this before everyone else.

Trump is delivering 4% growth. With what is to come, Trump will be the GOAT (or at least the Trump era will be). And the darkly comical thing is that the establishment has gone all out to hate him will have hundreds of years of decline during which to regret hating on him.

What to do? I wish the best for the AE tribe, and my own. As Randall Parker says, you just have to be better, personally. No debt, get wealthy, be frugal, rise higher personally, swim hard upstream when the current is going downstream.

There's a tremendous amount of power and stability in America as currently constituted. People are never going to go, "Welp, time to break it up." The entire world would rally against it. Many, many compromises would be made before it happens.

"Identitarianism" more often that not seems to make its adherents useless as political operators. "I don't like the nigs and the spics so I'm going to hide in the bushes" in 2018 is an abdication of responsibility. It's giving yourself an excuse not to care.

You must engage in the messy business of politics. The SJW left is vulnerable and entirely defeatable. Defeat the white leftists, and the problem of demographically managing their (ultimately pitiable) non-white helots becomes much more tractable.

"Nothing says we can't "break up". > Geography says we can't.Also enemies separated by nothing but land who want it all and want us dead says we can't.

The advocates of partition can't read a map. The rest of humanity can. Manifest Destiny=look at the map. Atlantic to Pacific it is...and no competent people or government will ever settle for less.Only competent people win wars and survive genocidal conflicts.Nothing says it's going to be you.

Nothing.

You're not actually arguing for partition. You're arguing for more white flight. It doesn't work...we already tried white flight and they followed. They always will until chasing us means none return.

Chasing us should also come to mean that we follow back and lay waste those who invaded us: the real solution to Mexico.

The real solution to Mexico will ultimately be applied by the winner here - it's destiny.And manifest.

Of course (((they're going to run))) and their pitiable helots are going to suffer the consequences of their fantasies turned to nightmare.

"Also, a lot of our (((hostile elites))) love Communism, and hate Russia for eliminating the Soviet Union. Turning toward Russia and away from hostile competitor China helps to disempower those (((elites))), which is good for Americans."

People like my dad are Democrat voters who are not at all like SJW freaks or pointy headed intellectuals. My dad actually thinks that The New Russia is going to revive a Soviet style empire and is already a political threat due to "meddling" in our elections. That's why the Russophobes make a stink about the annexing of Crimea and such. Most generic Dem voters don't care that much about CultMarx stuff. The WWG thing is a niche issue.

Also, in the 1950's-1980's most Americans didn't like Russia. There were a handful of Soviet apologists in the 1940's-early 1960's hanging on for dear life, but even they largely gave up on Soviet Russia by the 1970's.

WRT neo-liberalism, most post-1990 liberals don't have a communist bone in their bodies. The modern Left almost completely abandoned New Deal style redistribution policies, with Bill Clinton himself gutting welfare in the 1990's, a decade in which it really became harder for many Americans to find quality work. America itself was more "communist" in the 1940's-1980's, when good jobs could be had, unions were stronger, and welfare became much more generous, and this was widely accepted by the public, not just elites.

"There's a tremendous amount of power and stability in America as currently constituted. People are never going to go, "Welp, time to break it up." The entire world would rally against it. Many, many compromises would be made before it happens."

Read the tea leaves. America right now is at it's lowest point of consensus since the actual Civil War. There aren't even two sides, per se; the Clintonite Left and Reaganite Right doesn't even want any changes to happen, while the Bernie Left and Trump Right want to make America a place that has nothing in common with the 1980's, 90's, and 2000's.

So that's four, count 'em, four different tribes out of alignment. And that's just politics; there's also the issue of simmering racial division, and the obvious threat posed by having 50 million foreigners within our borders. Back in the 1920's and 30's, we had leadership committed to reining in radical ideology promoted by foreigners in our midst; nowadays many of our leaders encourage foreigners to hate America.

Also, most non-Americans hate America and would love to crack it up. And not without good reason, since America's behavior abroad has grown increasingly arrogant and pointless.

Also enemies separated by nothing but land who want it all and want us dead says we can't.

All the better reason to dump our unassimilables on our enemies before we re-take the territory they squat upon. Having to deal with a bunch of mooching, entitled, militarily useless bodies will eat out their substance and make them much easier to defeat, and of course the left is ideologically unable to use the measures we'll use to deal with such problems.

Atlantic to Pacific it is...

That's why the USA runs from the Rio Grande to the Arctic ocean. Oh, wait....

You're arguing for more white flight. It doesn't work...we already tried white flight and they followed.

That's what the temporary partition is for. We dump the problem on our domestic enemies and force them to deal with it alone. Since the problem is already concentrated in blue areas, this requires next to nothing from us.

When we start getting White refugees from the Blue areas, that's when it's time to go on the offensive.

I'm reading a history of medieval Spain & one of the many things that is interesting is the formula for manumission. It was fairly common & often happened in a last will. The formula outlined the liberties the freeman now had and ended with a statement like, "So-and-so is made a Roman citizen."

This is in 1,000 A.D. in the Christian rump of Spain, occupied by hordes of Muslims; people are still tying their identity, at the very source, with being a Roman citizen. Imagine.

Good point. Someone suggested Lincoln as a Sulla figure. Sulla was an archconservative, Lincoln obviously not--though there is still a certain appeal to that conception. Just as the age of Augustus was Rome's second founding, so was the Lincoln's war America's second founding.

Anon,

Are we supposed to be moved by the false bravado of an anonymous commenter on the internet? Where and how do you fight, I wonder?

216,

Novel thought, thanks.

Ha, our Crassus keeps changing. A generation ago it would've been Bill Gates or maybe Warren Buffet. Just a few years ago, it looked like maybe it would be Zuckerberg. He sort of looks like a Roman, even.

As for dissolution, my best guess as to how it manifests: Severe economic crisis leads to gubernatorial candidate of a state running on secession and being elected on that platform.

Mr. Rational,

There are plenty of examples within Roman history of pulling back territorially for the good of the empire. Trajan's empire was indefensible. So was Justinian's.

Dan,

The second quarter's 4-handle on GDP growth could represent the peak. It's not implausible. You've made a bold prediction, but not an unimaginable one.

Anon,

Razib offers similar advice. He sees the middle disappearing and advises doing everything you can to be on the top rather than on the bottom.

IHTG,

Admonitions against black-pilling are good.

But also beware creating a false dichotomy. I think political dissolution is nearly inevitable, a question of when not if. But that doesn't mean I'm withdrawing. I'm having kids, I'm trying to get Kris Kobach elected, etc.

Bryan,

And for five centuries after that to the east. And even in Europe then, to the northeast of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire was on the ascent.

Back when Pawlenty was in office in MN, I wasn't paying much attention to local politics, and by that point partisanship was on the rise so opinions of Pawlenty fell into the usual blue team vs red team nonsense.

Pawlenty is a mixed bag.

"His early career included working as a labor law attorney and the vice president of a software as a service company".

I can't imagine he was representing the workers or unions.

On the bright side, he supported passenger rail at a time when rail was the bete noir of the Reagan Right; this actually continued Jesse Ventura's notable support of expanded passenger rail in the state. However, his overall approach to public budgeting was classic Reaganite, as he refused to raise income taxes but did raise fees and also borrowed from numerous agencies and programs to off-set the revenue losses caused by declining income tax collection.

Also good:

"Early in 2006, after issuing a study that estimated the cost of illegal immigration to the state as approximately $188 million, Pawlenty announced a program for changing the way the state dealt with persons who were in the United States illegally. Pawlenty said that the economic benefits of illegal immigration did not justify the illegal behavior.[95] Pawlenty's extensive proposal included the designation of 10 state law enforcement officials as the Minnesota Illegal Immigration Enforcement Team, "trained to question, detain and arrest suspected illegal immigrants" with a focus on "such crimes as human trafficking, identity theft, methamphetamine distribution and terrorism." He rounded out his proposal with tougher penalties for false identification, and instituting a fine of up to $5,000 for employers of illegal immigrants. His proposal was challenged by DFL senators who preferred increased legal immigration to punitive action"

Minnesota is not a state that prioritizes the prairie farms (and their cheap labor needs) as much as the neighboring Dakotas or Iowa. It's a state with the expected rural-urban bifurcation that's become common since the 1990's. Republicans who expect to reach the senate or governorship can't subsidize rural elites that much, since the many yuppies and working stiffs of the Twin Cities metro area mostly don't give a damn about agribusiness. That being said, on cultural issues Pawlenty registers as strongly conservative (remember that Minnesota like the rest of Midwest is culturally conservative). Being in the Lutheran belt, he supported an expansion of the smoking ban (in the South, you aren't supposed to sic the nanny state on smokers; Oklahoma actually forbids local governments from enacting bans!)

"Germany and Japan have fertility rates of 1.5 and America is basically similar. Sub-Saharan Africa is at 5 and 6. And with a much younger population to boot, the population shift is something like a factor of 10 in 50 years and a factor of 100 in a century."

Africans are not physically or mentally engineered to survive cold or even temperate climates. Northern US cities had to spike milk with vitamin D to correct hormone deficiencies in black children. Northern Europe is even more laughable as a host for Africans, being that it's even further to the north than the Northern US is. Only 9 American states have a black population greater than 20%, and 9 are in the South while the other state is in the Southern Mid-Atlantic.

"This is an HBD blog historically and we understand that demographics swamps everything. Global average IQ must collapse. Blacks and Hispanics basically accumulate little wealth and they are numerically taking over."

IQ ain't what it's cracked up to be. America in the 1980's, then a country over 80% white, saw vastly rising levels of crime, bullying, outbursts of anger and rage, etc. Temperament and character is not the same thing as IQ; research indicates that people born in 1961 (a heavily white generation) had some of the worst scholastic aptitude scores ever recorded. Assuming you're a ]Gen X-er or Millennial, surely you must remember how horribly behaved Boomer adults were in the 1970's-1990's? Who gives a shit what their IQ score was (presumable rather high given that they were a very white generation)? Gen X-ers also scored rather poorly, too (the youth culture of the 1970's and 80's was profoundly anti-intellectual). I for one will not weep for the (heavily white) generation of adults who, beginning in the 1970's, beat their children, got into public shouting matches, habitually stole from everyone and everything (the government, co-workers, neighbors, family inc. children, and of course the future resources of society), and shamelessly passed off this cultural descent into manic irresponsibility as a liberation from the "oppression" of social norms. Now that these "adults" form our leadership, we can't escape the predations of neo-liberalism and cultural Marxism. Boomers fought to install PC as a means to greater financial rewards (can't offend possible customers), but as usual their greed and narcissism is gussied up with bullshit regarding various virtues (this from a generation that couldn't stop itself from beating up the most vulnerable population of all, children).

With all due respect, society goes through sweeping changes regardless of ostensible levels of intelligence. A lot of "smart" people in the 1980's thought that children were being murdered in Satanic cults. Right now a lot of gainfully employed and articulate people believe that Russia is controlling an active US president.

Actually, economies will be shattered by the fact that the West, the Arab world, and China went all-in on turbo capitalism and elite debauchery. Ur Larry Summers' used their brains to fuck over millions of people so that the elites of two generations (Boomers and Gen X) could safely sit upon their golden thrones and mock the cries of scores of pitiable serfs. As PJ O'Rourke jokes, it only stands to reason that Republicans bitch about the government never working when of course they of all people can't run it well. Similarly, two generations who thus far can't, on a level of basic civic functioning, discern their ass from a hole in the ground (Boomers and Gen X-ers), are preventing the implementation of much needed reforms that would pare back elite arrogance and enable the lower classes to attain greater dignity (and in the case of Millennials, upwards of 80% of them are on a fundamental level beneath even middle class status). While Boomers appear to be afflicted with sociopathy (chronic lying, theft, and evasion of accountability), with X-ers it's more a case of unwillingness to "buy into" anything that smacks of the dreaded "snowflake" agenda. Far too many X-ers appear to be all too comfortable getting marched to the gallows as they hang onto their prized individuality and acceptance of the ugliness of life. Signing on to a "new" New Deal would send the message that Gen X stood for the wrong approach for what, 40 years? Like, it's a good thing for people to not be bullied and challenged repeatedly, even by their "friends", as Gen X-ers were in the 70's and beyond?

Yeah, wake up Boomers and X-ers: your social and civic culture in the 70's, 80's, 90's, and 2000's stunk. Far too often you mocked or ignored the "losers" and the "wimps". What did that portend for the future? A society where theft and exploitation are routinely ignored. Where a select few gain massive opulence while millions drown in debt, shitty wages, and non-existent job security.

The youth of the 1970's, 80's and 90's, who were hyper competitive and insensate as we slid into decadence, have a lot to make up for. It's time to put the punk rock act back in the closet; hell, go ahead and burn the motherfucker. The time for Me Me Me is over. Being callously dismissive of warmth, compassion, and humanity isn't acceptable anymore (just ask James Gunn).

The unspoken part of this story is "The White Death" of Steve Sailer fame. The Third Opium War has left fatalities in excess of 200,000 and casualties several times higher. This is the root of why labor force participation is down and wages are stagnating. Possibly more significant than immigration and MGTOW NEETs.

Why should it be a problem that nobody wants construction jobs? Today's construction jobs are for immivaders, and when we throw out 60 million indios & mestizos and 40 million Africans we won't need any more construction for quite a while.

When we DO need construction again, we'll have a White economy that can pay White wages for it and White people will be happy to work those jobs.

WRT Ellis Island nausea, I did a google book search for the phrase stemming from an N-Gram search. N-Gram actually breaks the book results down by "blocks", based on historical frequency. Lo and behold, 1910-1993 is one block, and after 1993 the phrase becomes such a cliche that subsequent blocks last only 4-6 years.

As I like to say, the 60's and 70's aren't the problem. No, it's the 80's and 90's where things really got ugly. Before the 80's people still felt at least some vestigial nationalism and tribalism, and were sensitive to accusations of placing the individual before the group, the vagabond before the native, and the traitor before the homeland.

Books dripping with sentiment about immigrants become a problem in the 1980's (one from 1987 is called Many People, One Nation).

Ronnie Raygun's collection of public papers features a sugary outpouring over Ellis Island (invoking God, no less) from 1982.

A book about interlopers coming to Galveston, TX came out in 1983 (the title is Galveston, the Ellis Island of the West)